


A Spark Apart

by andersam5



Category: Captain Disillusion - Fandom, Disney - All Media Types, Disney Kingdoms (Comics)
Genre: Based mainly on the comic, Channing still needs a vacation, Crossover, Disney World & Disneyland, Epcot, Friendship, Gen, Imagination, Sequel, Theme park fic, You still don't need to know what Captain Disillusion is to understand this Fic, imagination institute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 15:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17389070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andersam5/pseuds/andersam5
Summary: A sequel to the Fic "Return of Imagination"===========================It's been three months since the Dreamfinder's return, and all is not quite well. With Blair on the case, there's some surprising discoveries in store- but can he solve the puzzle of Alan's disappearance before the Captain's reality tears apart?Co-written with Tumblr user Wafflebloggies





	1. Crashing to Earth

                "As we've found time and time again, it’s amazing what a simple background plate-" Captain Disillusion grinned a cocky little half smile as he was wrapping up his thoughts, the camera catching the slight glint of his metallic dimples. A still image of a partially cloudy azure sky flickered into the captains hand, the hologram-like screen a figment of imagination made manifest. "A popcorn ball on a string-" He held up one in his palm. "And a little manufactured camera shake can do to convince the world that any insane alien theory is possible."

                The Captain looked up at the sound of a tune, the screen fizzling out in his palm.

                "But now I’m afraid it’s time for me to go, kids. A suburban mom in Cincinnati is thinking maybe essential oils might hold the key to curing _all_ her son's problems. Remember, love with your heart, use your head for everything else. _Captain Disillusion!"_

                The video cut as Ellie Fleet turned her cell phone screen off, tucking it back into her pocket. She blinked rapidly, trying to get her eyes to focus after staring at the small screen. The halls of the Academy Scientifica-Lucidius put her old public highschool to shame, with their gleaming corridors and state-of-the-art technology. She'd been nearly speechless the first time the Dreamfinder had brought her here, surprised to find the Imagination Institute had inherited its looks from the Academy that preceded it, sitting further south in Florida then its institute little brother. Here it was a gleaming blue and white, as opposed to the orange and yellow Ellie was used to back home. Students in uniform, each dotted with personal touches to display the personality of each pupil, passed her on their way to classes. It made Ellie realize how little she missed having to wear her cast member uniform. Less than a week after the Zeitgeist incident, Blair had offered her a part-time job as his lab assistant. She'd accepted in a heartbeat, and now whenever she wore a lab-coat it was because she wanted to, with what Figment had described as her 'super-duper extra-awesome Ellie-brand enthusiasm'. Now, 3 months after Epcot had been taken over by a crazed spirit and a nightmare, Her life had almost completely changed.

                The click of a door handle pulled her from her memories.

                "I don't think getting the shareholders to agree will be any problem..."

                As the Institute had Nigel Channing, the Academy had Chairman Auckley. He was a severe man, who wore his pride in learning and progress on his sleeve. It had been obvious to Ellie the moment she'd shaken his hand, the first time they'd met. Those eyes, as dark as his skin, held a sort of credence to them, an expectation of great things from everyone, regardless of that person's personal esteem. The beige suit he was wearing today clashed horribly with the deep violet number his fellow chairman, Dr. Nigel Channing, wore as he followed him out.

                "People these days seem to like those who don't respect authority to _become_ said authority, for some reason," the Institute’s Chairman ribbed, with a cheeky half-smile. "So I think you'll do fine."

                Last to come was the Dreamfinder, laughing as he shut the door behind him with his free hand. The other hand was propped at his waist in order to support Figment, the purple dragon sitting happily on his partner’s shoulder.

                "Thanks for the vote of confidence, gentlemen."

                "Dr. Mercurial-" Auckley started.

                The bearded man raised a brow.

                "...Dreamfinder."

                It went down.

                "Before I head off, I must ask-" Auckley lowered his voice, and Ellie tried to casually lean in to hear.

                "That Mesmonic Converter, it is somewhere safe, yes? You both steam-rolled me into not ordering it to be destroyed, the least you can do is assure me we won't have any more... Incidents."

Ellie had to admit she didn’t blame Auckley for being a little uptight. Dreamfinder had told her about his last great adventure before he’d lost his memory. How his first clash with the Doubt had been in this very school, and how Figment- somehow- had saved the day with none of then his current living descendant; a great great grand niece who was every bit as brilliant as he was

                "I can assure you with the utmost certainty, the helmet is under lock and key," Dreamfinder said, confidently. "In a holding of my own personal design."

                "All precautions have been taken," Channing nodded in agreement, and Auckley seemed to grow a fraction less tense.

                "Good. Well then, gentlemen, good day." Auckley nodded, and with no more fanfare, he turned on his heel and left.

Channing let out a long exhale, his gaze turning to the Dreamfinder. “Well that went well.” Dr. Channing was actually smiling more often now, a change everyone in the Institute had noticed. “I’ll be heading back to the Institute now-”

“Would you like a ride back on the Dream Machine?” Figment piped up.

“No! No-“Channing’s voice squeaked through the hall. “No, thank you, Figment, I’ll just… take my car, thank you. See you tomorrow, Dreamfinder.”

He gave Ellie a nod as he passed down the hall, drawing the Imagineer's notice.

    "Oh! Hello, Ellie!" Blair's smile seemed to make the hallway grow brighter.

    "Hi, Ellie!!" the dragon greeted, before Dreamfinder continued. "I thought you were helping out Ala- our friend the Captain today."  

"I was," she grinned as she hopped up, the thicket of bangles on her wrists jingling, "but my bike picked up some ideas earlier today in that machine you installed on it, and I thought you might want to take a look at them."

                Blair had barely opened his mouth, when a shriek rang out so loud Ellie swore that somewhere, part of the glass pyramid was cracking.

_"Grunkle Dreamfinder!!!"_

                Blair barely had time to brace before a redheaded bundle of energy launched herself into his arms. He spun, Figment jumping ship before he was knocked off, only to get clotheslined by a different bundle, this one a blur of yellow-orange fur.

                "Capri!" Blair tipped his hat up off his brow as he set his three-times-great-grandniece down. "What are you doing here? I thought you were still on that exchange program in California!"

                "Well..." A finger fidgeted with one of her braids, winding around and pulling out even more flyaways. "I... still kinda am? I kinda got sick of you always messing up the microphone when you Skype me, so I sorta just... popped by."

                "Zippity-doo, Spark is here too!"

                Ellie hadn’t yet met Capri’s flying, rhyming imaginary friend in the furry flesh. She’d been semi-introduced over Skype, but Spark never stayed still for long- a trait he shared with Figment- and up until now Ellie’s impression of him had been a sort of ginger blur. The little cat was a Spark, just as quick and childlike as Figment, if not with more fur. As Capri let her uncle breathe for a moment- she was getting so _tall-_ she turned and gave Ellie a no-less-enthusiastic hug, and Spark leapt to her shoulder, staring curiously with big, bright-green eyes.

                “Spark, this is Ellie,” said Capri, once they’d sorted out a slight entanglement issue between Capri’s wild hair and Ellie’s fiddly Space Invader earrings. “We talked a bunch of times-”  
                “Pleased to meet you, Ellie Fleet!”

                “Oh, sweet _jeezums_ you’re cute,” squeaked Ellie. “Can I get a picture?”

                “Zippedee-yay, of course you may!!”

                As Ellie unlocked her phone, Capri caught sight of the video. Her eyes lit up.

                “Is that a new episode of Captain Disillusion? Grunkle Dreamfinder told me how you guys met...”

                As they walked and talked, Ellie and Capri leading the way through the landscaped grounds of the Academy, Blair pulled out his own phone. He still, sometimes, found it a bit odd to think of it as _his_. Carefully, and with not a whole lot more fluency than a certain Dean Finder had once had, he tapped out a message.

                _My niece Capri’s here from California. We’re going to dinner, would you like to come?_

They’d hardly reached the parking lot before the phone buzzed in his hand.

                _Sorry, kind of busy._

Blair paused, letting the others walk ahead.

                _Capri’s a big fan of your work._

This time a couple of minutes passed. Then,

                _Cool, I’ll sign something. I’m sure Ellie can get it to her._

                Blair frowned. Making sure he was still out of the way of any oncoming cars, he plucked out another message, fighting with the autocorrect.

_Ellie tells me you have a new video out. Why not come celebrate? Its been awhoth_

                Blair blinked, shook his head, then typed again.

                _*awhile_

                He looked up to see Ellie and Capri had parked their bikes right next to the Dream Machine, the vehicle sticking out like sore thumb, the blimp a brilliant purple against all the drab-colored cars.

                “No way! He outfitted you with that?!” Capri was looking excitedly at the device mounted on the side of Ellie’s bike. It was bronze and the size of a shoebox, fastened to the rear suspension. Snaking from the top was a small funnel, a miniature version of the one on the Dream Machine. Its white tube led to the top of the box, a small circular dome set in it. It glowed purple, the inside swirling like ink in water as ideas floated around inside.

                “Hey DF!” Capri called. “Can I get one of these?”

                Blair smiled a little. “I’ll see what I can do for my favorite niece.”

                He glanced at his phone, where his message stared back at him with no reply. His smile fell as Figment returned to his perch on his shoulder.

                “Everything okay, Dreamfinder?”

                “Hm?” He tucked the phone back into his pocket. “Uh, sort of, yes. Hey, let's go get that dinner."

                He climbed up into the Dream Machine, his feet taking up their comfortable position at the controls. "Want to hop on, Capri?"

                His niece lit up like a bulb. "A ride on the legendary Dream Machine? Oh _heck_ yes!!"

                The evening was clear and warm- perfect flying weather. Blair had learned, after a couple of interesting experiences, to stay below commercial airspace, but it was still quite high enough to be fascinating for Capri, who took every opportunity she could get to fly. She was riveted, watching the streets and houses slip by beneath them, Spark pricking his ears up whenever they passed a bewildered bird or two.

                It was wonderful to spend time with Capri, and during the meal Blair reflected (not for the first time) that he really should take a holiday, get to know not just his great-great-great niece but her mother as well. Although the fact that he’d never met them up until a few short years ago was nothing more than a quirk of time-travel, and certainly nobody’s fault, it still felt strange to him. Although they were separated by a century in either direction, with himself as their only link, he felt the same about them as he would have felt for his family back home. It just felt _natural_ for Blair, to feel close to his family.

                Which was why, perhaps, he felt so uncomfortable every time he happened to glance at his phone. It wasn’t just dinner, or meeting Capri, or any of the other half-dozen little things the Captain had been too busy to do over the last few weeks and months. It was the feeling he couldn’t reason himself out of, that he was being pushed away.

                "Hey, DF!"

                Blair looked up as the waitress set down his food in front of him. "Ah, yes, the chicken is mine, thank you." The waitress, who clearly recognised him, beamed at him before leaving to tend to her other tables.

                "You alright?" Ellie asked, not even looking as Capri heaped syrup onto the pancakes she'd ordered off the breakfast menu. "You seem a little spacey today. I mean, more than usual."

                "I'm- Capri, easy on the syrup there little lady- I'm in a bit of a funk, I guess. Is that the term?"

                Both Ellie and Capri nodded. Blair looked to the vacant chair, next to the one where Figment and Spark were sharing a booster seat.

                "It's been awhile since the Captain joined us. Back when I was Dean, Alan and I would have dinner like this often. And now whenever I talk to him, it's either through text, or you."

                Ellie propped her elbow on the table, cheek on fist. "Yeah... lately, whenever I bring you up, the Captain gets kinda weird about it."

                Blair winced a little. He didn’t have to ask to know exactly what Ellie meant by ‘kinda weird.’ The same chilly, irritable tone had crept into the Captain’s messages to him, few and far between as they were. Blair was by no means tone-deaf, even if he was relatively new to this odd and often frustratingly brief method of communication. He could tell when he was being brushed off, and he could certainly sense the mood of a text or an email when it was as downright obvious as these. For once, he knew he wasn’t imagining things.

                “Why would he be avoiding us?” _Avoiding me._ “I’ve consulted him a few times on technological matters, it’s true, but I didn’t think I was asking too much. I thought… well, he generally seems to enjoy explaining things.”

                "Oh, believe me, he does," Ellie sighed, as Capri swallowed.

                "I like the one where he explained the ping pong tricks," she said, as she passed her fork to Spark, who used it to pick up some pancake for themselves. "Mom still doesn't believe me when I try to tell her that one was visual effects."

                "Last time I stopped by with a shipment of debunking topics, I caught him moping about," Ellie admitted. "He said he was looking for a stain in 'this old carpet.'" Ellie mimed finger quotes. "Carpet that only came into existence a few months ago, might I add."

                Figment reached out, stealing a cooked carrot off Blair’s plate. The dragon knew about a lot of things, real or imaginary, but the one thing he knew better than anyone in this world was the Dreamfinder. They were intrinsically linked, and this had been proven without a doubt after Blair buried everything that made him the Dreamfinder, and they still found each other. As such, he hated seeing him down like this.

                "Well... maybe you should go talk to him!" he said, between bites of carrot.

                Blair considered. He’d never yet seen the Captain’s ship in person. It felt like overstepping his bounds, even though he had to admit he was curious about this vessel that had, as far as Ellie described it, popped into existence at the same time the Captain had. It wasn’t exactly mannerly to descend- or ascend, in this case- upon someone’s home uninvited, but- he glanced at his blank phone screen again- an invite looked pretty unlikely right now. It was up to him.

                “You’re right,” he said, smiling at Figment as the little dragon stole another carrot. “We’re his friends, there’s no reason why I should be standing on ceremony. I’m sure it’s nothing a quick chat can’t straighten out.”

                "Wait, but doesn't the Captain live in space?" Capri asked. "Like, _space,_ space?"

                "Uh...Yeah? What of it?" Ellie said, looking to Capri as if she had just asked her if the sky was blue.

                "Can we... go to space?"

                Ellie beamed, "My bike makes the trip up there often. When we're done here, I can take all of us up."

                Capri dropped her fork.

                "Only after we've finished dinner," Blair was quick to point out. Capri picked her fork back up. The piece of pancake on it had mysteriously vanished, which of course had nothing at all to do with the new speck of syrup on Sparks lip. 

* * *

 

                Shortly after he'd moved to London in the 1900’s, Blair remembered going out and seeing what the big city had to offer, and in particular he remembered a film he’d seen in the cinema. It had been silent, of course, as all movies were back then, and he could clearly remember a scene where a large metal bullet hit the man in the moon in the eye and stuck there. The theater had laughed uproariously at it, and at the time even Blair had to admit space travel, by cannon or otherwise, was a far-off impossibility.

                He thought this all to himself as he held tight to Capri, sandwiched between him and Ellie as the air grew rapidly thinner around him. Through his goggles he could see the sky turning from a radiant indigo to the deepest blue, then black. He didn't want to think about how fast they were going, nor did he want to think of how gravity seemed normal, even as Ellie gunned the engine and they headed straight upwards. It did feel a little bit like that space ride back home. Despite all this, Blair felt a chuckle bob up in his throat, then a giggle escaped, collapsing into a full-grown laugh as the Earth rapidly shrunk behind them.

 _"This... Is... AWESOME!!!"_ Capri yelled, over the deafening roar of air in their ears.

                After what seemed like a long time and no time at all, the bike slowed. The Earth glowed beneath them, serene and quiet in the vastness of the infinite universe.

                "Whoah..." Figment breathed, as he climbed back onto Dreamfinder’s shoulder "It's so... I can't even find the words!!"

                "I suddenly feel very small," Capri said, with reverence.

                "I get that feeling every time I look at it," Ellie agreed. "But for now, we'd better stop in on the Captain."

                She swung the bike around.

                "Good Lord…" murmured Blair.

                He couldn’t help but suspect she’d positioned them on purpose for a big reveal- one moment, they could see nothing but the Earth and the pearly haze of the stratosphere, the next, the Captain’s ship filled their view. It was big and gunmetal-gray, with a great reddish hull that curved down to a blade like the keel of a very sharp, very aerodynamic yacht. At the stern, an absolute nonsense amalgamation of flared intakes and massive turbines indicated the engine, which looked as if it alone took up as much room as a normal-sized house. On the curving side facing them, a see-through swathe of landing deck jutted out into space, and as Ellie brought her bike neatly up alongside it, a section of railing folded out to intercept the small craft, creating a slender and only mildly terrifying bridge to help them step onto the glassy deck.

                "Please be careful, Capri," urged the Dreamfinder, as his niece leapt fearlessly from the bike, her sneakers skidding a little on the transparent surface of the deck. "I told your mother I was taking you to dinner, not skydiving."

                "Oh, she wouldn’t fall," said Ellie, helpfully. "We’re outside the Earth’s gravitational field- she’d just float away."

                "Thanks, Ellie." Blair climbed from the bike himself, putting a slightly nervous hand on Capri’s shoulder. "That’s a great comfort."

                Capri scrambled for her phone, quickly taking a picture of the Earth below her feet. Blair lifted his goggles off his head and started to slip them back over the band of his top hat. He couldn't tell if the unease in his stomach was from the idea of this meeting, or just plain vertigo. "Still amazed that the Mesmonic Converter could pull something this big out of Alan’s... the Captain’s... imagination. He must have had this place in mind as much as you had your bike." Dreamfinder set his hat back on his head as Ellie pointed to a button set in the wall next to the door.

                "I'll let you do the honors, DF."

                Blair pressed the button, producing a faint, classic _bing-bong_ chime from somewhere inside. Figment landed on his shoulder, parking his small paws in front of him in his politest manner and tucking his tail supportively around Blair’s neck. There was a short pause, and then the door clicked and swished upwards with a pneumatic hiss, revealing the Captain.

                In fairness, Ellie, Capri, Spark, Figment and Blair were quite a crowd to unexpectedly find on one’s doorstep, especially when one’s doorstep was in geosynchronous Earth orbit and somewhat out-of-the-way. The Captain certainly looked startled. Startled… and not very happy about it. Other than that, he looked just the same as always- the same bright yellow track jacket, the same nondescript pants and black gloves, the same half-chrome face with a troubling, twin-like resemblance to someone Blair remembered very well.

                “Well, this is a surprise!” he said. “All of you, here! Without asking.” The Captain shot a glance at Ellie, who shrugged as Capri covered her mouth in excitement.

                Blair removed his hat, holding it to his chest. "I'm sorry, Ala-Captain."

                The debunker winced, visibly.

                "Sorry to drop in on you like this, I know you said you were busy, but we figured you could use a break and some company."

                The Captain opened his mouth.

                "-And we came all this way," Ellie added, a hand on Blair’s shoulder as she leaned in "All _26,000 miles_ of it, to come see you. Could we at least take a pit stop?"

                The Captain closed his mouth. He looked from Ellie, to Blair, then Capri, then back to Ellie.

                She gave her head a small shake, as if to say, _'Well?'_

                "...Fine," the Captain grumbled, as he stepped aside. Ellie smiled and walked right in, followed excitedly by Capri, then Blair.

                "Who's the cat?" the Captain asked, flatly, as Spark darted after them.

                "As I have Figment, my niece Capri has Spark!" explained Blair.

                “I’m Spark, that’s me! Hi, Captain D!” said Spark, happily, from the top of Capri’s head.

                Figment beamed, but the Captain looked suspicious.

                "Oh, my gosh!" Capri said, as Blair followed the Captain inside. "This is it! This is where you shoot the videos!!"

                The room Capri had recognized so quickly lay almost immediately inside the ship proper, through a small, cable-lined airlock and a short corridor. It was a deep scarlet-red and full of equipment, mysterious boxes, bits of scaffold, props, and half-assembled pieces of lighting rig. Blair turned to peer through the small, roughly oval porthole in the far wall, and started as something nudged his foot. He looked down.

                “Leica!”

                Alan’s small calico-colored cat made a rusty little noise of welcome and rubbed against his ankle. Blair leaned down and tickled her under the chin, more relieved than he could express to find something on this strange ship that actually seemed pleased to see him. The Captain certainly didn’t seem to echo the cat’s sentiment. When Blair looked up, he caught him looking right at him, his expression flat and unreadable.

                “Ellie did mention Leica was up here with you,” Blair explained, smiling. The Captain shrugged.

                “I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way up here just to check on a cat.”

                "No, I actually came up here to talk to you," Blair admitted, his smile falling a bit. "It's just been so long since we've talked face to face."

                The Captain gave yet another noncommittal shrug. "I've been busy, like I said. The channel has really been taking off."

                "The other night, I was up late, and they were showing some of those old black and white horror movies. Made me remember all those late night movie marathons we'd used to have, where I'd talk about the story and you'd go on and on about-"

                "-about the visual effects, yes." The Captain sighed. He seemed to be fighting down a great deal of annoyance.

                On second thoughts, Ellie could sense that the situation they’d walked into was maybe a little too touchy to be patched up with some small-talk. She bit her lip, then launched into her best Cast Member Tour Guide act, steering Capri cheerfully towards a doorway across the room. “Hey, Capri, want to see where the Captain edits his videos? C’mon, Spark, you too! This way, guys- you snooze, you lose!”

                The door swooshed shut behind them, leaving the Captain and Blair alone in the red room, with Figment hovering uncertainly at Blair’s shoulder. The Captain straightened his jacket with an automatic little jerk, looking away as the silence spun out between them.

                “I remember everything they did, just like you do,” he said, finally. “What’s your point?”

                "My point," Dreamfinder started, "was that we used to hang out all the time; when I was Dean you were my lifeline to be honest. I engineered that version of me to be all alone, I never expected him to make friends. But he- _we-_ did, and you were our best."

                The Captain was quiet for a moment, still not looking at him.

                "When you _were_ Dean." he said, slowly.

                "Pardon? "

                "You _were_ Dean. Past tense. Subjunctive. The moment that helmet was on your head Dean Finder disappeared, and his replacement was _you."_

                "But Dreamfinder _is_ Dean!" Figment offered. "Dean was just Dreamfinder without his memories!"

                "Alan didn't see it that way," the Captain said, ice lacing his words.

He touched a button on his wrist device, and a bright display sprang up, rotating between them, scrolling information. “Look, Dreamfinder. I’m trying to be nice. I have a great deal of respect for you, professionally. I didn’t want to have to be the bad guy here, but you keep pushing it and at this point I really don’t know how else I can spell it out for you. _Yes,_ Dean Finder and Alan Amelik were friends. But you’re not Dean, and _I’m-not-Alan._ Look at me. Do I _look_ like some nerd who works in IT? I’m a freaking superhero! I can fly, I have a spaceship. I have one of these!” He shut the wrist display off with a snap. “I can do- whatever the heck _this_ is!” A wave of his gloved hand, and a slice of empty air flared and shaped itself into a screen frozen on a still of an exploding star, which played and paused as he tapped at it.

                “I have a YouTube career, I have a crazy stalker older than the universe itself who thinks she’s my ex, and my desk lamp keeps yelling at me and I don’t even _know_ what’s up with that! About the only thing I don’t have is a lot of patience to keep repeating myself, so _please_ could you just, I don’t know...”

                An impatient swat batted the screen straight into the nearest wall, where it shattered into nothing. The Captain folded his arms.

                “...leave me alone.”

                Dreamfinder frowned, his shoulders shooting up to his ears. Anger was an emotion that Figment had only seen a few times in his life. It just wasn't an emotion that fit Blair. But from where he hovered, the little dragon could feel the heat growing in the Dreamfinder’s heart. "So, after all that we went through together, you're just going to pretend it all never happened? That instead of talking about it you're going to just brush me off? There's nothing wrong with being Alan-”

                "Let me ask you something," the Captain interrupted.

                "Let's say all went as planned with your little experiment of personality. The great Dreamfinder back safe and sound in his own head, having to deal with the threads left behind. What would you have done with them?"

                "I don't think-"

                "Answer the question."

                Blair thought for a moment.

                "I would have just... the plan was to quietly pull away. Dean was never meant to be noticed."

                "And Alan and Ellie? Would you have told them who you really were? Or would Dean have just disappeared?"

                The Dreamfinder was silent. The look in his sorrowful eyes said enough.

                “But I guess that doesn’t matter, right?” said the Captain. “Because you never expected him to make friends.”

                "A lot of things went wrong, I'll admit, but I did all of that to protect people from the Zeitgeist, from me-"

                "And look what happened anyway."

                Figment felt it the split second before Dreamfinder acted on it. He strode forward, closing the space between them and looking the Captain straight in the eye.

                "I just want to make things right with you!"

                The Captain was startled, plainly, but he held his ground. Blair was taller than him, and so much the more human of the two in that moment- upset, confused, hurt, angry- that the hero looked even more alien than usual by comparison.

                There was silence for a moment, as Blair stared into the Captain’s familiar grey-green eyes. This close, they looked remarkably weary- bloodshot even- behind the human half-mask. There was no telling how long the pause would have lasted, if an anxious, involuntary little whimper from Figment hadn’t broken the tension.

                The Captain shifted his weight, took a deep, hard breath.

                “What do you want me to say?” His voice turned purposefully stagey, smooth. _“Why, yes, Dreamfinder, I’m truly grateful for your invention giving me the opportunity to exist and all, no hard feelings, please, drop by whenever you want.”_ The fake grin dropped off his face. “That was sarcasm, by the way, that’s actually like, the last thing I want you to take from this.”

                "What I want is for us to be friends again!"

                "And Alan just wanted Dean back!!" the Captain exploded. Figment covered his horns in a similar manner to one covering their ears.

                Nobody said anything for a moment, before the door opened and Ellie poked her head in.

                "Hey, uh... Everything okay in here?"

                "No." The Captain took a deep breath. "Nothing is okay. Look, Dreamfinder, I can't really speak to anyone right now. Can you just... go? I have to finish the script for the next episode."

                Blair let out a long sigh, the pressure and heat in his chest escaping with it.

                "Alright. Thank you for having us, I guess. C'mon, Figment." He motioned for the dragon to follow as he headed for the door. The spark gave the Captain one last look as he'd turned, staring out the oval porthole to the Earth.

                "For what it's worth..." Figment said, "we thought you were a pretty good idea."

                The Captain didn't turn back around, even as the door slid shut behind him, and the ship was once again as quiet as the vacuum void outside.

                “Well, that went _really_ well,” said a high, mildly aggravating voice from behind him. It sounded like it belonged to someone who had taken a good lungful of helium before speaking. The Captain let out a heavy breath, turning irritably towards the corner of the room, where a small desk-lamp stood on the floor next to a scatter of papers.

                “Don’t start. He would’ve just kept bugging me, and it's not like I'm gonna tell him-”

                He stopped and gasped as a sharp pain lanced through his forehead. _“Gah-_ what’s _doing_ that? Why does it keep happening?”

                “Maybe you’ve got a crick in your anglepoise,” said the lamp- or more specifically, the bright point of light inside the lamp’s shade, which flickered along in time with the voice. “I know a great little massage place in-“

                “Oh, shut off,” snapped the Captain, suiting action to words as he stooped and clicked the lamp off at the plug, cutting the voice off mid-suggestion. He kept the heel of his hand pressed to his temple, where fake skin met real circuitry. The pain was fading, but he didn’t feel much better- jumpy, strung-out, fried. About normal, in fact.

                Captain Disillusion let himself down, somewhat stiffly, in the corner of the red room. He had existed, so far, for a grand total of three months. He _liked_ existing. Existing had a bajillion movies, and viral videos to nitpick, and really good food, and cute cats, and people telling him he was great in YouTube comments. He didn’t want to go back to not existing, but at the same time, some parts of existing sucked. Really sucked.

                He put his face in his hands.

                “I’m real,” he said, vehemently, his voice muffled by his gloves. Unsupervised, the room jerked and jumped around him, stuttering like a bad video edit. “I’m real.”

* * *

 

                The next morning was dreary, a miserable grey hanging over the glass pyramids of the Imagination Institute. That didn't seem to deter too much of the crowd, as Figment could see guests lined up beneath him. A ripple of voices followed him as he fluttered over the crowd, looking down and waving whenever an exclamation was said in a child's voice. It felt so nice not to hide anymore. The little dragon turned as he reached the loading dock, the cast members not even looking up as he slipped into the ride track. Making sure to stay quiet he went over the cars that were currently receiving a recently re-recorded preshow. Figment preferred this one- at least Dr. Channing cracked a smile in the new version.

                Over the track, and he arrived at a frosted glass door. It still amused Figment to no end that the person tasked with labeling the back door to Dreamfinder’s lab had used his last Ms and Rs on the front door, having improvised with two 'Ns' for the back door.

                The last one had fallen off, and now the door belonged to Dean Finder, which Blair had admitted was still true, and both he and Channing had been too busy to correct it.

                The spark slipped inside, expertly winding through the junk and out into the open, the white tile and walls the room had started with still tried to cling to their luster as the room had become cluttered with prototypes, diagrams, and inventions of all sorts. Figment caught up with Dreamfinder, sitting at his drafting table.

                "Hey DF! How are those Dream Machine improvements going?"

                "I can't focus," Dreamfinder sighed.

                "Thinking about Alan?"

                Blair nodded, wordlessly.

                The little dragon perched atop the drafting surface, peering upside-down at the drawings pinned there. “I thought for sure talking to the Captain would help, but it feels like it made things worse. I- I don’t think I ever saw you get so angry before.”

                He itched his snubby snout. “You really miss him, huh...”

                Dreamfinder ran a hand through his amber hair. Today, for once, he wasn't wearing his usual suitcoat, opting instead for his favorite collared shirt, his suspenders making neat straight lines that broke the white as they arced over his shoulders. The other hand set the pen down and reached up, scratching behind Figment’s horns.

                "I do. He was family, you know? The Christmas before I met you, I was all alone. Alan’s family lives across the country, so I spent Christmas with him. It was nice."

                “That sounds fun,” said Figment, butting his head appreciatively into Blair’s practiced fingers. _“Nnk…_ I wish I coulda been there. That whole Christmas was boring. And… and, if Christmas is boring, you’re doing it wrong!”

                _I was all alone, too._

                “You think the Captain might wanna spend this Christmas with us?”

                "We had each other the next year, didn't we?" Blair smiled. "Remember how I snuck you out in my bag?"

                "That was great!" Figment giggled.

                At the dragon's next question, Blair’s smile faltered. "I don't know. I'm not sure he'd want to do much of anything after I exploded at him yesterday." His thumb scratched at the difficult area where Figments jaw met his face, and the dragon leaned in further.

                "The Captain himself is a brilliant idea, much more complex than Dean ever was, and I'd love to talk with him about it. But instead, we're squabbling like a bunch of school boys. This is certainly not my best moment."

                “I bet Alan would’ve told you all about it,” said Figment, wistfully. “Nobody knows an idea half as well as the person who dreamed it up.”

                "He never mentioned him to me. Which is odd, because for an idea as big as the Captain to be made through the Mesmonic Converter and stay stable, he had to be a very, very strong concept to hold in one's mind. Like you, Figment."

                The little dragon beamed.

                "You know, when you were gone, I always knew you were somewhere out there," Figment said. "Because without you, I wouldn't be around!"

                Blair’s fingers stopped.

                "What did you say?"

                “Without you-“

                “You wouldn’t be around- that's _it!_ Figment, you’re astounding! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier!”

                “Aw, gee, if you say so,” said the little dragon, flushing fuchsia. “Uh... why?”

                Blair pushed back his chair. Figment watched him with growing intrigue as he grabbed a couple of pages of his notes and started to pace. “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. The exceptional nature of the conversion doesn’t exempt it from following the same pattern as all the other known manifestations. The Dream Machine- Capri’s bicycle. Ellie’s craft. Spark- and you! Dream energy may be chaotic, hard to define, by nature, but it’s still bound by certain rules. The Captain is an idea made reality, a figment of Alan's imagination, like you're a figment of mine- without Alan, he couldn't exist! The Captain isn’t some alter ego, He’s his inspiration! Captain Disillusion is a Spark!"

                "So... where did Alan go?" asked Figment, as Blair passed him on another circuit of the floor. "And how do we get him back?"

                "And now, my friend, " said the Dreamfinder, eagerly seizing up his pen as he dived for the rest of his schematics, "we're asking the _right_ questions.”

                He dumped the schematics on the table, scribbling something before standing once more and striding over to an innocuous cabinet close by. With a tap on the door, a keypad slid open, and Dreamfinder punched in a number before the pad snapped back and asked for his fingerprint. Once he’d given it, the door opened, and the Mesmonic Converter helmet emerged into the light. Grabbing a crank handle, Blair looked about before finding just the right socket in the misleading array of gears painting the space around the glass housing. He plugged in the crank and gave it some vigorous turns, and the intricate gears locked and spun. The top of the glass case popped open, and Blair pulled out the helmet.

                "When's Ellie getting in?"

                Figment looked to the Mickey Mouse-shaped clock on the nearby desk, its head bouncing side to side in time with Blair’s pacing.

                "Not for another thirty minutes or so"

                "Perfect. Because this idea is going to need all the hands we can get."

* * *

 

                Ellie couldn't help but feel she now knew how that little Mickey Mouse felt, as her head bobbed rhythmically. Dreamfinder, screwdriver in hand, had been at this for hours now, and Ellie had barely understood anything he’d said since about lunchtime.

                The Mesmonic Converter sat comfortably on her head as Blair worked on removing one of the metal plates.

He'd said something about adding a capacitor of some sort, which made Ellie wonder if he was trying to turn the helmet into a time machine. Those had capacitors, right? She'd seen one in a movie once, but she couldn't remember the name of it-

                "Ellie, I'm going to need you to keep your thoughts as blank as possible right now, okay?" Blair said, stepping back as a lick of lightning went through the device.

                "Sorry."

                "Socket wrench."

                Figment offered the tool to Blair’s waiting hand from his perch inside the toolbox.

                "How's that feeling, Ellie?" Dreamfinder asked.

                "Okay, I guess-”

                "Ellie, again, blank thoughts please."

                She huffed and rolled her eyes.

                “Maybe it’d help,” she suggested, after about another minute or so, “if I knew what it was I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about.”

                “It’s really more about… working from an even baseline,” said Blair, thoughtfully, weighing a complicated brass tool of his own devising in his hand. “What we’re hoping to achieve only happened once before, so while we know it’s _possible,_ it’s hard to pin down exactly the right combination of mnemonic settings and circumstances to allow the correct configuration of neural-”

                “Dreamfinder!” implored Ellie, as the helmet gave off a frazzled _phhttt_. “English? Please?”

                Blair considered for a moment.

                “I need to adjust the helmet very carefully, so that I’ll be able to get inside the Captain’s head.”

                "You _what?!"_ Ellie blurted, forcing Dreamfinder to take a step back as a flock of starbursts materialized into existence. Hot pink in color, they sounded like dropping pennies as they hit the tile.

                "What did you think we were doing?" Figment tilted his head with an amused smile as Blair yanked the helmet off Ellie’s head before she could will any more abstract shapes into being.

                "I dunno, improvements? To be honest, that last sentence was the only thing you’ve said in the past hour or so that I understood."

                "Just by existing, the Captain proves that Alan is still out there somewhere " Dreamfinder explained. "If my theory is correct, he could still be in his imagination. I'm going to go in there and pull him back out."

                _"We're_ going to pull him out," Figment corrected.

                "But what about the Captain himself?" Ellie asked.

                "I can't say for sure," Blair admitted. "But I hope this can end with everyone getting what they want."

                He turned the helmet over, studying the intricate controls around the lenses with a strong jeweler’s loupe pressed to one eye. Ellie perched on the corner of the desk, taking advantage of her freedom to check the messages on her phone.

                “When you came back,” said Figment, doubtfully, “Dean didn’t exist any more.”

                “We were more or less the same person, Figment,” Blair reminded him, gently, adjusting the lens in his eye. “With the Captain, I think you’ll agree the change is more distinct, and not exactly-”

                “Um- guys?” Ellie broke in. She slid from the desk and put an anxious hand on Blair’s arm, her eyes still fixed on her phone.

                “I... I think you need to see this.”

* * *

 

                “Greetings, children. Captain Disillusion here, and-”

                There was a horrible noise of rending metal. The Captain flinched and ducked, shielding his head as a large, heavy Fresnel lamp plummeted from somewhere in the ceiling and smashed into the floor right next to him in a spray of glass shards and sparks.

                “And I’ve been meaning to fix that.”

                He stood, fixing his badly-rumpled collar and brushing glass and plaster dust out of his hair. Coming up with a particularly large shard, he glanced at it, then tossed it away with an offscreen clatter. “Even the best visual effects aficionados have off-days. I can admit that. The mark of a true professional is being able to rise above it- being able to continue to produce the quality debunk content that you- the viewers- deserve. So why don’t we jump right in? Take a look at _this.”_

With a flick of his hand, a screen appeared. It dropped into his palm with a peculiar hollow sort of _ponk_ , white and blank.

                “In this video-”

                The Captain poked at it with his thumb. Nothing happened. He frowned, tried again.

                “In- _this- video-”_

                Another impatient poke, another awkward silence. The Captain turned the screen around to look at it properly, and did a double-take.

                “What the-”

                He shook it, turned it over, and bonked it experimentally against the wall, demonstrating quite clearly that it was nothing but a plain, white square of slightly dog-eared pasteboard.

                “Okay, cool!” he said, eventually, tossing it aside. “I guess we aren’t doing that. That’s fine. This isn’t an issue,  I can just- ga _aagh!”_

The Captain grabbed at his head, squeezing his temples, hissing furiously under his breath. All of a sudden, it didn’t sound like he was speaking to the camera any more. It sounded like he was speaking to someone entirely different, someone breathing down his neck, or maybe just someone he was _furious_ with.

                “Seriously?! This needs to stop. How am I supposed to concentrate like this, huh?? How am I supposed to do literally the _only thing I exist for_ when everything keeps _[beep]_ ing up and _you,_ you won’t even-”

                Somewhere in the background, muffled and indistinct, an alarm started up. The interruption stopped the Captain in his tracks, and he seemed to remember his intended audience, the camera’s avid eye. With an evident effort, he refocused and looked up, peeling his fingers unwillingly from his head.

                “I’ll… I’ll be right back,” he said, dully, reaching towards the lens. “Love with… the thing, use your… whatever. Bye.”

                _Zzzt._

* * *

 

"Oh, dear," was all Blair could say, taking in everything of the display, the gears turning in his head. Any comment about the video was cut off by the door to the lab opening. Dr. Channing entered in a tornado of nervous energy, talking into his phone.

                "Yes, gentlemen, I understand- no, I-" He paused. Someone was yelling on the other end. "Yes, I understand this is a matter of national security-"

                Another pause. This time, Channing had to hold the phone slightly away from his ear. He shot Blair the glance that every Institute scientist feared, before he returned his attention to the phone.

                "No, sir, I see no reason to get NORAD involved... Yes, yes, I have him right here. L-look, gentlemen, I'll get back to you once I talk to him, have to go, cheerio-"

                Channing ended the call, looking to Blair. "That was NASA and the CIA, calling me because apparently they can't contact the satellite that debunking friend of yours operates, because it's _falling out of the sky."_  

* * *

 

                Nearly a hundred kilometers above their heads, things on the ship were getting loud. Loud… and _weird._

                The Captain stumbled to a closet, grabbed Leica’s carrier, and shunted the cat unceremoniously inside. Another alarm started up, louder and more urgent than the first, this one accompanied by the calm, automated voice of the onboard computer.

                “ _Warning. Critical reality failure detected in all sectors. Please begin evacuation protocols immediately.”_

The whole ship was shaking. Trying to look directly at anything was an instant headache, as the surfaces of the walls and floor around the Captain blurred and glitched. As he dove for the doorway of the red room, great swathes of the walls blinked in and out behind him.

                The corridor beyond was hardly any more stable. One moment, it was a curving metal gantry over a row of spinning, humming turbines, red-lit and hectic, full of wires and blinking lights. A blink, and it was just an empty room swathed in bright green drop-cloth- another moment and it was nothing, nothing at all, just blackness, distant stars and haze.

                The Captain felt as if a very similar sort of violent, bewildering struggle was going on in his chest. He hit the pad by the airlock with a gloved fist, and sprinted down the glassy dock where Ellie usually parked her bike. As the whole ship stuttered and split apart behind him, he skidded and took a desperate cannonball off the last foot or so of the dock, a moment before the whole glassy surface simply winked out underneath him.

                He hung in space, watching helplessly as the component sections of his ship pulled themselves apart. It split up like an expanded drawing out of an encyclopedia, a blueprint on a grand scale by MC Escher, every part lifting away from every other part in a nightmarish jigsaw of vanishing pieces. The shapes fritzed and seized and finally began to flick out of existence one by one, losing their shape and textures and tumbling slowly into the lower mesosphere as they went. Already, the whole thing bore no resemblance to a ship at all, just a wide cloud of space-junk, badly-rendered and sputtering out into nothing, leaving him alone in the vast darkness above the Earth.

                “Well… crap,” said Captain Disillusion, quietly, to nobody in particular.

                For a little while, he stayed put, scanning the clouds below him as they drifted in slow patterns, getting his bearings. Finally, he twisted into a dive and powered downwards, head-first like a worried, black-and-yellow Superman, towards the strip of bluey-green that contained Florida.

                He punched through the stratosphere, Leica’s carrier bundled safely in his jacket. With his mind racing and the cold wind gusting around him, it took him several minutes before it struck him that something wasn’t quite right. He was quite used to flying- it was one of the coolest things he could do, in his opinion- and he knew how it usually felt. Something was wrong- hell, _everything_ was wrong right now, but this was yet another new something. It was almost as if-

                The Captain tried to slow down, fighting the right way up in the slipstream. There was a growing sinking feeling in his stomach, an unfamiliar sort of… _heaviness,_ tugging at him, making every movement an effort. As the individual roads and buildings began to take shape in the patchwork quilt of Florida far below him, he finally realised what it was.

                Gravity.

                He wasn’t flying.

                He was falling.

* * *

 

 

                Blair set the Mesmonic Converter aside, strategically hiding it behind a stack of books.

                "Please tell me you know something about this," Channing practically begged, exasperated already. "Having Disney down our necks was already hard enough, but the US government is a different beast entirely!"

                Ellie was already on her phone, trying to call the Captain’s number, the worry etched on her face matching Blair’s.

                "I don't, sir, we talked to him yesterday and everything was-" A hesitation. “-fine. He seemed alright."

                Channing had just opened his mouth when a loud, but distant, noise tore its way through the Institute’s walls. It sounded like something breaking the atmosphere miles above their heads, followed by a distant tone that started slowly rising in pitch.

                Channing’s phone started ringing.

                Blair and Ellie exchanged a single, wide-eyed look, then both broke into a run. They piled through the door, leaving Channing behind. Figment shot after them, winging over the Chairman’s head.

                “Sorry Doc- gotta go!”

                “You assured me you’d leave the fabric of reality alone until at least our quarter-appraisal, Blair!” Channing yelled after them, as he fumbled for his phone. “Yes- ah, General, no, everything’s under control- no, I’m _fairly_ sure it isn’t a missile-”

                Out in the lobby, Figment caught up to Blair as he and Ellie sprinted through the Institute’s crowded lobby, past the statue of the Dreamfinder and out past the looping cattle-grid of the guest queue. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the source of the noise, as they burst out into the cloudy daylight and a throng of confused guests, almost all of them staring upwards.

                Arcing steeply downwards through the sky above the Imagination Institute, the long vapor trail of a free-falling object barreled towards them, the contrail behind it broken into several stages that showed where it had broken the atmosphere and the sonic barrier, in that order. Blair’s gaze flicked quickly between it and the ground, calculating, and he turned to the crowd, arms out.

                “Everyone take a step back, please, this is going to be-”

                - _ssssssssthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhPCHOOOM-_

The impact shook the ground, knocked mouse ears flying all over the plaza, and made the water in the fountain jump a good foot out of its basin, splattering everyone nearby. Right in front of the Imagination Institute, in the flowerbed at the base of the rounded lightbulb sign, a short trail of shredded geraniums and furrowed earth terminated in a smoking impact crater. As the haze cleared, and leaves, earth and geranium bulbs pattered down in a gentle rain, it became possible to make out an arm sticking up out of the crater like a flag of surrender.

                It was holding a small, grey, entirely unscathed cat-carrier.

                Silence, and then the crowd all started to talk at once. Some clapped, seeming to think it was a show.

                "Captain!!" Ellie cried, already stepping over a mound of cracked concrete, Blair and Figment starting after her.

                The ground was hot with energy, the soles of Ellie’s hot pink Converse shoes hissing as she neared the edge of the crater. Leica greeted her with a small _mrow._

                The Captain was on his back, eyes staring blankly up at the underside of the monorail track overhead.           Swallowing thickly, Blair found his voice first as Ellie started prying the handle of the carrier out of the Captains hand.

                "Captain? Can you hear me? Dear Lord-"

                Figment swooped down, waving a hand in front of the Captain’s blank stare.

                "Hello? Anybody home-?!"

                With a sudden twitch, the Captain’s body shuddered like a bad video glitch, and in an instant awareness returned to his eyes. He sat up, painfully, holding his head in both hands as if it might come off at any minute.

                “Hello, Dreamfinder,” he said. “My ship just became a giant Airfix kit and disappeared, most of my powers are turning into garbage Photoshop filters, and I seem to have forgotten how to fly. How was _your_ morning?”

                "Interesting, to say the least," Blair replied. He offered a hand, but the Captain didn't take it.

                "Hey!!" From the lip of the crater, a security guard, who Dreamfinder dimly remembered was named Malcolm, looked down at them while doing his best to hold back the crowd. "Everything alright down there?"

                "Just fine, more or less, thank you!" Blair called back, as the Captain painfully started to bring himself up. Another shuddering flicker shot through his body, and he stumbled into Blair, who caught him. There was a sort of energy around him, something Figment could feel in an instant as the little dragon tried to help hold him up.

                "This isn't good," he squeaked.

                The Captain mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Ellie, Leica’s carrier safely in her arms, stepped back as Blair and Figment pulled and pushed and managed to bully him out of the pit in the churned-up flowerbed.

                “Eeesh, you… don’t look so great, Captain.”

                “Yeah, well, I feel about as good as I look,” he managed.

                This was a worrying statement. Apart from battered and bruised and about as box-fresh as you’d expect from someone who’d just knocked a hole in the landscape with his face, the Captain looked weirdly _wilted._ His jacket looked like it had been run through the wash a few too many times, closer to pale tan and gray than yellow and black. The skin half-mask he wore looked as if it had been copied very accurately from someone who hadn’t slept for a week, and the chrome underneath looked dull and strange.

                The sight was troubling, to say the least. Blair was noting as much detail as he could. "Come on, let's get you inside."

                The Captain stumbled over the curb of the planter, trying to gain his own footing and push Blair away, but his body seemed to have other ideas. The crowd parted like a sea, and Channing came stumbling out of the guest entrance just as they reached it, phone still in hand.

                "What the devil is going on here, Mercurial?!" he hissed as he leaned in, eyes widening as the Captain’s form flickered once more.

                "We're going to figure it out," Blair said as he passed. Channing’s eyes fixed on the cat-carrier, and in his eyes one could see him trying to connect the dots.

                "Wait-" He spun on his heel as the group passed him and the crowd started to swoop in on him for answers.

_"Wait!!"_

It was just beginning to rain. The light patter of drops falling on the glass pyramids overhead mingled with the curious whispers and camera-clicks from the guests around them, as Dreamfinder and Ellie supported the Captain through the lobby on their way to the more accessible Institute-side door of Blair’s workshop. It was easier than it should have been. He seemed to have given up insisting he was fine, and instead just went dazedly wherever they guided him. Blair almost wished he was still being argumentative. Even being yelled at by a ticked-off superhero would have been better than this stunned passivity.

                Back in the workshop, the Captain slumped into a chair, pushing shaking hands through his hair. Figment landed on Blair’s shoulder, knitting his small paws fretfully together.

                “What’s happening to him, Dreamfinder?”

                "Hey, deep breaths," Blair assured, worry etched in his features. He didn't want to say he'd never seen anything like this before.

                "Captain, what happened?" he asked, as he tipped the Captain’s head up, looking into his eyes. The pupils were dilated, and when he touched his shoulder he felt disincarnate, as if the surface tension of his form would shatter at any moment.

                "Captain? Talk to me- he's losing steam-"

                "What?" Ellie asked as she set the cat-carrier on the nearest desk.

                "I had this theory-" Dreamfinder said as he lifted the Captains hand. It fell back to his knee, limply. "The Captain is an idea as strong as your bike or the Dream Machine, or even Figment. But dream energy isn't an infinite source of power, it needs a dreamer to keep it going."

                "And with Alan who-knows-where..."

                "Exactly."

                Blair went to the desk, picking up the Mesmonic Converter.

                "We need to get Alan back _now,_ or we'll probably lose both of them."

                The Captain closed his eyes. As Blair shoved the helmet under his arm and dove for his equipment, Ellie shook the hero’s crumpled shoulder, put a hand gently on the side of his face. If nothing else, she figured human contact would get a rise out of him- usually, he hated being touched.

                “Captain- listen to me- it’s okay, we’re gonna fix this. Blair knows what he’s doing-”

                She stopped in her tracks, pulling her hand away. She stared at it in horror, then turned to show the others. Her palm was smeared with something shiny, metallic.

                Paint.

                Silver paint.

                “I’m... afraid...” mumbled the Captain, behind her, “...s’time… for me to….”

                _“Oh, no, you don’t,_ buster!” yelled Ellie. “Dreamfinder! Now would be great!”

                "Right-" Blair pushed the last screw into the helmet, making last second adjustments. "Ellie, grab your bag please. Figment, with me-"

                The little dragon perched on his arm as Ellie scrambled for her purple ideas bag, looping the strap over her shoulder before moving to Dreamfinder’s side.

                Blair set the helmet on his head, the device waking with a warm hum.

                "Sorry about this, Captain."

                He closed his eyes and thought, harder than he'd ever thought before.

                Earlier that morning, a sleepy Capri had answered her phone, seeming to wake when she'd heard her great-uncle’s voice. Then, with even more aplomb, she'd told him how she'd traveled into his imagination. How when Doubt had been breathing down her neck, Figment and Spark by her side, she'd cared harder than she ever had before, and the rest had been history.

                Blair didn't want to admit he had no idea if this would all work, but he forced his thoughts to turn to Alan, to the Captain, holding the picture of them in his minds’ eye.

                The helmet thrummed louder and louder, electricity beginning to pour from the sides. Ellie forced herself to stay close.

                He thought of Alan, of the time they'd spent together, of the laughs they'd shared, of how he'd stuck by his side.

                Ellie flinched, letting out a surprised sound as the lighting gathered and took a sharp, jerky turn, striking the Captain in the head. In an instant, his eyes flew open and he sat up straight. Figment touched at Ellie’s arm, pointing to the space just a few feet in front of them. A dot, barely bigger than a marble, hovered in the air at Ellie’s eye level.

                A sharp _cRACK_ and a bursting rush of energy, and the marble seemed to fold into itself, expanding into a massive floor-to-ceiling black hole.

Ellie’s hair blew forwards as the gaping void blew papers everywhere, humming with a low roar.

                "Hang tight now!" Blair yelled, over the din.

                He took her arm, shielding his face from the rushing wind. Figment gripped his shoulder tightly with all four paws, his small wings beating frantically against the vacuum. As the portal reached its fullest possible aperture, it let out a final, rib-shaking _thrumm_ of dream energy and stabilized- and at that exact moment Dreamfinder pushed forwards, stepping with Ellie straight into the blackness beyond.


	2. The Heart of the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's never a dull moment in the realms of Imagination, as the Dreamfinder knows well. Blair, Figment and Ellie explore the perilous mental landscape to find their friend, but they might find more than they bargained for in the heart of the storm...

The void was massive, surrounding them with no up or down or left or right. For a moment Ellie thought her eyes were closed, until she realized the wind was drying them out. She blinked rapidly. The only sound was that of her own voice screaming, the void ripping the sound from her throat the moment it left it. All she could feel was the downward force of gravity, and Blair’s strong arm around her waist.

                Suddenly and without warning, reality snapped sharply into focus and the void bent, like a cloth sheet trying to hold the weight of two adults and a small dragon. It creaked and groaned before shattering like glass. The ground rose up to meet Ellie’s back with a heavy _thud_ and the world turned on its axis, gravity reversing. Her head spun as Blair groaned somewhere to her right.

                _"Ghh..._ Guess it's been a longer time than I thought since I did this."

                Once Ellie could feel herself in her own brain again, she sat up. The clouds were grey and threatening to rain overhead. Looking to her shoes, Ellie found she was sitting on a bed of grass that had probably once been green, but was now a dying brown. In the distance, the plain seemed to drop off into a dark seaside. The main fixture was the massive bubbles that floated in the air, dotting the landscape in all directions. They were of all shapes and sizes, the closest one as big as a car, and they didn't seem to be in any rush to pop, unaffected by the breeze. The insides seemed to contain some sort of hazy smoke, preventing her from seeing through them.

                "Where are we?"

                Dreamfinder sat up to her right, filtering some dirt between his fingers. It was sandy and chalky.

                "Seems we're on a machair of some sort," he observed. "Fascinating!"

                “A whichwhat?” Ellie picked up a smooth pebble, turning it over in her fingers. It looked so real- just like something you might find on the beach at Santa Rosa. She could hardly grasp the idea that it was nothing but a detail of someone’s imagination.

                “A grassy coastal plain!” said Figment swooping over their heads. “That’s from Blair’s Logodaedalian Dictionary!”

            As Ellie carefully got up Blair reached up, removing the mesmonic converter from his head. He had to admit he wished he’d remembered to grab his jacket and hat before they’d jumped. But then again if they were in imagination…

Blair thought, and soon he felt a top hat, looking exactly the same as his usual one, flop onto his head. Seems he still had _some_ knack for this.

                The bubbles floating about them were now the focus of the party’s attention, and Figment idly flapped upside down for a moment as they investigated. He flapped up to the nearest smoky sphere.

“Wow, wow, _wow!_ A real-life Thought Bubble! I never knew they’d be so… smoggy.”

                Gingerly, he poked it. A dull ripple spread across the surface from his stubby orange claw, like a raindrop in an oily puddle, but nothing else happened.

                “Hmm. I think this one is a little stagnant.”

                He pressed at the bubble and his claw poked through into it, disappearing into the fog as the bubble refused to pop. "Cool!"

                "Figment, wait-"

                Too late. The little dragon had already poked snout-first into the bubble, the rest of his body still hovering in the air. He immediately pulled his head back out.

                "Hey Dreamfinder! Look at this!"

                Blair looked to Ellie, shrugged, and poked his head into the bubble. Hesitantly, Ellie joined him.

                The inside of the bubble looked like a living room that hadn't been updated since the seventies. Ellie teetered forwards, her arms coming out and supporting herself on the floor, a floor that was much closer than the ground her feet were standing on. The room was decked in balloons and streamers. There was a small pile of presents next to the couch, and everyone was wearing pointy paper hats.

                "A birthday party!" Figment exclaimed. None of the party goers seemed to hear, or notice any of them. The whole scene seemed slightly out of focus, hazy artifacts sticking to the ceiling as if the party was recorded on a very worn-out VHS tape.

                They were all at the eye-level of the small child in the center of the room, about five years old with curly dark hair.

                "That must be-"

                "Alan!!!" A high pitched shriek tore through the scene, as a lady in a gaudy red dress entered the room from somewhere behind them. She bent down, pinching the little boys cheeks, and the child protested.

                "Auntie Alice-!"

                The scene stuttered and glitched, the child’s face suddenly turning chrome. Now he was wearing a tiny yellow jacket, a perfect miniature version of the Captain.

                "Auntie Alice, stooooop!"

                The scene hummed, sustaining the look before in a snap as it reverted to Alan again.

                Everyone froze, and then the memory seemed to replay itself like a badly degraded vine.

                Blair pulled his head out of the bubble as Ellie and Figment did too.

                "Fascinating..." he mused. "I'd hazard a guess that these memories can't quite figure out who they belong to."

                “Hmm.” Figment settled on his shoulder again, tapping a claw thoughtfully against his snout. _“We_ never had this problem.”

                “Yes, this is all very much uncharted territory,” agreed Blair. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a map.”

                “And somehow I don’t think Google Earth is gonna work here,”  Ellie hazarded.

                Blair walked to the peak of the hill, scanning the withered plain and endless shore. “Perhaps we can find a local to guide us...”

                Ellie squinted out over the ocean, then along the shore. The breeze surprisingly lacked salt, tasting of something more resembling vanilla.

                "Hey." She touched Blair’s arm as he safely stored the Mesmonic Converter in her bag. "There's someone."

                Figment and Blair followed her pointing finger to a figure further down the cliffline. Even from afar and in the cloudy light they could make out some bright yellow. Whoever it was seemed to be losing a battle against a gang of small bubbles.

                "Is that the Captain?"

                He certainly appeared to be in difficulties. Like a swarm of small, annoyed bees, the cluster of bright bubbles harassed the figure on the shore below them, evading his attempts to grab them.

                “At least he seems better than he did outside,” puffed Ellie, as they started to run down the sloping, scrubby beach. She had to pay careful attention to where she put her feet, afraid of turning her ankle. She was pretty sure a sprained foot would hurt just as much in this imaginary place as it would in the real world.

                “That makes sense, I think,” answered Blair, at her heels, holding his hat on as he jogged. “The energy required to maintain a real, tangible form is- quite another thing from a dream-self. This is _a_ Captain, but not necessarily the one we- Figment, be careful! We don’t know what those are!”

                Figment, with the advantage of his speedy little wings, was the first to make it down to the shore, leaving Blair tripping over tussocks at the high-tide line. A bubble the size of a Christmas tree ornament sailed past him, and he caught it like a small purple outfielder and held it tightly in both paws.

                “I got one!” he called. “Wooh. Feels kinda tingly! Hey, Blair- catch!”

                Blair caught the bubble as he came panting up to where the Captain stood. He held it up to his eye, but it was as smoky and fogged as the larger ones overhead. Figment landed on his hat, another safely-trapped bubble in his hands.

                "They shouldn’t be here at all!” snapped the Captain. He seemed unconcerned by the arrival of two humans and a dragon in this lonely place, more irritated than anything else. “These are key memories, they shouldn’t just be- _ouch!”_ A particularly rowdy bubble bounced off the side of his head. “They shouldn’t just be floating around. _Thank_ you,” he added, taking Figment’s catch from his outstretched paws.

                “I bet we can help round ‘em up for ya!” Ellie pulled her gauzy scarf from around her neck and pounced on a low-flying bubble about the size of an apple, hovering a few feet away. Figment took her lead, zipping off after another.

                The end of a hectic ten minutes saw the small team sitting on the shore, very hot and bothered and out of breath, with all the bubbles accounted for. Ellie’s scarf was bulging with them, and several more were trapped under Blair’s hat. Figment had one in each hand, one in the curl of his tail, and one balanced on his horns, where it seemed happy to stay. The Captain had several bubbles in his jacket pockets, and one in his hand. He was examining its cloudy surface with a frown.

                Figment flapped up to eye-height, peering into the bubble.

                “I don’t think you’re gonna be able to fit in this one,” he observed, doubtfully.

                The Captain snorted. “Well, of course not, if you’re trying to do it the _analog_ way.”

                He let go of the bubble, leaving it hanging softly in the air, and made a sharp, conductive motion with both his hands. The bubble flared into a bright point of raw dream-stuff- then filled out into a familiar rectangular screen. He caught it, tapping the still image.

                A small boy again- Alan, maybe nine or ten years old. He was sitting in an old corduroy beanbag chair, scribbling in a notebook. Crumpled pages surrounded him, scattering the faded rug, and he was muttering excitedly under his breath.

                “-And he’s smart, and, and he can explain _anything_ so people listen. He’s a real superhero. He’s got a- a giant spaceship, just like the _Falcon,_ and he can fly.”

                Blair leaned in, enraptured by the display "This must have been the first time he thought you up! An important memory indeed."

                The Captain blinked at them. "Who are you three, exactly? "

                "You don't remember us?" Figment asked, as the Captain took the bubble from his hands.

                "Look, all I do is make sure these memories stay in order, alright? And I have to get these key memories safely stored away before _The Storm_ gets here. "

                "What storm? " Blair asked, as the bubbles in Ellie’s arms jumped, one of them rolling into her purple ideas bag. Offloading the contents of her scarf into the Captain’s hands, she sunk her entire arm deep into the bag, feeling around for it.

                _"The_ Storm," the memory-caretaker-Captain explained tersely. "The one that’s been ravaging the mindscape for months now?!"

                "Sorry," Dreamfinder apologized, tipping his hat up. "We're not from around here."

                "Clearly. Now if you don't mind helping me, I-"

                He was interrupted by a deep rumble in the air, the ocean roaring in response. His silver face fell, horror dawning.

                "Oh, no... "

                Blair looked up. The clouds overhead were turning an angry green, lighting crawling through the sky.

He was off before Ellie or Figment could say anything, jogging up over the crest of the hill overlooking the shore.

                A wall of clouds blocked off the distance as far as the eye could see, churning like an angry beast. Forms could be seen swirling in the tempest, large shapes coming into focus then fading again.

                "Good gosh," Ellie breathed. "Maybe that's what’s holding Alan up-"

                Movement to her left, and she turned to see Blair heading down the hill, running straight for the storm.

                "Hey!! Wait!!"

                “C’mon, Ellie!” Figment took off after the Dreamfinder, winging against the rising wind. Ellie broke into a run, her hair and scarf whipping back in streams, leaving the memory-caretaker-Captain behind on the shore with his armful of bright bubbles.

                She caught up with Blair as he splashed through the shallows, the water whipping up into white spume about them. The storm was really close now, the bank of glooming clouds racing towards the land.

                “D’you think it’s safe?”

                “I highly doubt it!” yelled Blair, holding his hat tightly to his head. With his eyes squeezed shut against the howling wind, Figment balled himself up against his creator’s neck and held on with all his might.

                “We’re going in anyway, aren’t we?” bawled Ellie. Water lashed at her knees. She could hardly hear herself.

                Blair took her hand.

                “He’d do the same for us, Ellie! Best foot forwards. One- two- _three-”_

                They jumped into the storm. Ellie’s feet tried in vain to touch the ground again, but the wind took them instead and they rocketed upwards, Ellie screaming as she tried to hang on the Blair for dear life. A groan broke over the wind, and Figment yelped as part of a skyscraper came out of the gloom, flying past them with the roar of a jet engine.

                Then, for the second time that day, they started falling, the bulk of the storm surge moving behind them. The rough waves below came into view, churning and hungry.

                "Hang on!" Blair yelled over the noise, as he closed his eyes. Ellie looked up, eyes fighting to stay open against the wind and bits of dream matter as Blair’s head seemed to start to glow a faint purple, as did the entirety of Figment’s body. A small purple dot appeared below them, then grew bigger. As it got closer, Ellie could see it looked rather similar to her bike in the real world, this one a deep purple and yellow. She found herself landing hard into the driver's seat, but Blair missed the passenger side, and the bike jerked diagonally as Ellie caught his arm, leaving him dangling off the side as rain beat down on his face.

                "I got you!"

                Ellie tugged hard, Figment helping as Blair struggled up into the passenger seat.

                "How the hell did you-"

                "ELLIE!"

                The face of a massive clock broke through the dark, heading straight for them. Instinctively, Ellie grabbed onto the steering and turned sharply, the bike narrowly avoiding the debris as it crashed into the ocean with a deep **_BONG_**

                The bike started heading upwards.

                "How the hell did you do that without the helmet?" Ellie called, over the rain.

                "We're in the realm of imagination!" Blair called back. "I don't need it here. Hope you don't mind I borrowed from the design of your bike, didn't have time to think up an original one!"

                "I think that's the least of our worries right now," she observed, as they swerved to avoid bits of clock.

                It was futile to guess at directions, or wonder if they were going the right way. The wind and rain grew to such a fury that it was all they could do to cling to the bike as it was tossed about like a toy between wild sea and swirling clouds, just one more scrap of debris at the mercy of the storm.

                And then, just as Ellie was starting to think it would never end-

                -it did.

                Given everything she’d learned so far about the realms of imagination, perhaps Ellie should have suspected that the ‘eye of the storm’ might not be the simple lull it would have been in the real world. Maybe if she hadn’t had her brain nearly rattled loose by the violent ride, she might have guessed as much. As it was, she was totally focused on staying alive, and so when the bike broke through the wall of boiling cloud into a still, glassy void, she was so startled that she completely forgot to steer.

                The bike’s undercarriage hit something hard and slick and the jarring shock knocked the two humans flying. Blair hit the ground hard, thankfully breaking nothing but his concentration, but that was enough for the bike. As it slid across the ground it spun into a twist of bright smoke and vanished, leaving Figment sprawled on the glassy ground where it had been.

                Ellie stood, hopping a bit and rubbing her bruised shin. Rainwater spattered from her dripping hair. “Oof… I’ve had smoother landings.”

                “Where are we?” whispered Figment, sticking close to Blair’s shoulder as the Dreamfinder got to his feet, wringing water out of the tail of his soaking coat. It was easy to whisper. Every sound here was deadened, smothered, as if the whole place was almost perfectly soundproofed. Blair remembered reading a paper on the world’s most silent room, a chamber in a lab in Minnesota so perfectly muted that nobody could stand to be in it for more than twenty minutes without starting to hallucinate from sheer uncanny acoustic loneliness.

                The ground was a glossy black and diamond-hard, like polished jet glass. It should have been a perfect mirror, but looking down Blair could see nothing- just blackness, endlessly deep.

                He tapped his heel against it, the surface giving a glassy _TUng_ in response. Suddenly it hummed to life, liquid crystals rearranging as a white haze spread outwards.

                "It's a screen!" Ellie was the first to exclaim, as Blair scrutinized the microscopic, hazy RGB filters.

                "Right you are, Ellie. LCD in nature, it appears."

                "The Captain sure does love his screens," Figment added, tapping a claw against the hard surface.

                Suddenly, the colors turned, flinching a faint yellow that faded back to white, with a deep bassy tone that made Blair’s chest hurt. Then another thrum, closely followed by another, then another, the rhythm growing faster. Ellie touched Blair’s arm, and Figment perched on the other, all eyes out for whatever might be coming.

                And then it stopped.

                Nobody said anything.

                "What do you think that wa- AAAAAAH!! "

                Ellie shrieked, as a hand burst from the ground close to Blair’s foot. It drew up to the elbow, then grabbed onto the smooth surface of the screen, impossibly beginning to pull itself up. The team backpedaled rapidly as a purple-sleeved shoulder followed it.

                "I have seen more than enough horror movies to know where this is going," Ellie said, as a purple baseball cap broke the surface of the screen, the Institute logo firmly in the center of it.

                Blair’s eyes narrowed.

                "Wait a minute-"

                A second arm quickly followed, the two working together to give a great push.

                And Dreamfinder found himself looking straight into the eyes of Dean Finder.

                "Whoah!" exclaimed Figment, from Blairs shoulder. "It's him! Er, you! It's Dean!"

                "So it seems. Not exactly solid, is he?"

                The modern double to Blair seemed to have inherited the characteristics of the screen under their feet. He wasn't exactly solid, and closer scrutiny clearly revealed the dots of red, blue, and green that he was made of.

                And then it spoke in Blair’s voice.

                "Alan?"

                "Hi Dean!" Figment was already all in. "Are you a memory-Dean?"

                Dean said nothing for a moment, before repeating what he’d said before with the exact same cadence.

                "Alan? You ready for movie night? I got some of those MST3K movies."

                "Hm, that sounds vaguely familiar... " Blair mused, quietly.

                Ellie waved a hand experimentally in front of the memory-Dean’s eyes. “I don’t think he sees us...”

                “To be honest, it’s all Greek to me,” said the doppelganger, smiling. “I suppose I’m not really very technically-minded.”

                “Ah, I remember that,” said Blair. “He was trying to explain… Blender? A computer program, I think. I meant to tell him-”

                “Not really very-” The memory-Dean moved forwards, forcing Ellie to step back hurriedly as he nearly walked right into her. Colors broke across his surfaces, red-green-blue distortion as he reset like an out-of-phase screen. “-i-i-I don’t dream. Never had one that I could remember.”

                Figment laughed. “I remember you told me that, too! You really had us going, Blair-”

                “Never had one,” repeated the memory-Dean, conversationally. “Don’t remember.”

                The shape stuttered again. The memory-Dean turned towards Blair, holding out a hand.

                “Hey, it’s Alan, right? You work at the Institute too? My name’s Dean- Dean Finder.”

                Blair watched the shadow of his other self- the fiction he’d made to hide in- with a small frown. The human imagination was a difficult thing to interpret. It could often be misleading, easy to read too much into. Like a dream, anything within it could be loaded with significance or have none. Brains were forever searching for connections, seeing patterns in random data.

                Having said that, Blair would have been a lot happier if the memory-Dean didn’t keep saying things that were, technically, lies.

                "Dreamfinder isn't here," the memory-Dean said. "So you'll have to deal with us."

                Another skip, his form rewinding and stuttering like a bad tape.

                "D-D-D-Dreamfinder isn't here- isnt here."

                Blair took a step back, as everyone in the party started to recognize what the memory-Dean was saying. There was a cold seed in the pit of his stomach as the echo of him continued, its face growing scared and fearful, seeming to look Blair straight in the eye.

                "No-"

                Now this... this was a hole in his memory. He realized he  couldn’t remember being Dean in this moment. The one thing he knew without a doubt was that him and Dean had been one and the same- they _were_ the same, just with the memories switched around.

                But that face, the face he'd made- the face Alan remembered- just as Doubt had lowered that dark, cold helmet onto his head.

                That face didn't feel like Blarion Mercurial’s face.

                It was purely Dean’s.

                "If I remember my dream, I'll let you know," the memory-Dean said.

                "Dreamfinder?" Ellie asked softly. "Are you okay?"

                "If I remember my dream, I'll let you know."

                "Dreamfinder?"

                "-remember my dream, I'll let you know."

                "Stop-" Blair croaked. He put a hand to his temple, trying to fight an oncoming migraine. A lick of lightning ran along the brim of his hat. "Please-"

                "I'll let you know."

                "Stop-"

                "I'll let you know-"

                "STOP!!" Blair could take it no longer, and the moment he opened his mouth a bolt came from his head, making his double stand still. Ellie clung to Figment as the thunder echoed through the eye of the storm.

                "I'm sorry," Blair said quietly, to his double. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lie. Neither of us did. And all I can do is ask if we can start again."

                Dean said nothing. He just stood there blankly. Then, slowly, a drop of something thick and black ran down his temple.

                "Uh.... Dreamfinder? " Ellie said softly.

                “It’s just a memory,” said Blair, taking a calming breath as Ellie edged closer to him. “It has no power to-”

                He broke off with a sharp breath as the memory-Dean’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. His touch was chilly, like the ground he’d sprung from. He looked up into Blair’s face.

                "They did the one thing they shouldn't have," he said. Another trail of sticky black rolled down his cheek, leaving an inky trail. The memory jittered, splitting into its component colors before jerking back together again. Blair pulled away, tearing his arm loose with some difficulty. The memory-Dean’s hold was like steel.

                “It has no power to hurt us,” repeated Blair, firmly. The memory-Dean’s open, friendly expression shifted, warped into a cruel smile.

                “And you’re an expert, are you?”

                  “Wait... I didn't say that. That was...”

                “Go ahead,” whispered the memory-Dean, through the ghastly grin on his ink-streaked face. “Go ahead. The world is listening.”

                "S-S-slack-jawed anachronism." The Zeitgeist-Dean chuckled, seeming to admire its dripping hand for a moment.

                "Is that-"

                "No." Blair answered Ellie’s question before she could finish it. "At least, I don't think so. It looks like a memory, but it doesn't feel like one-"

                Figment rolled up the sleeves of the sweater he wasn't wearing. "Whoever it is, he's got a lot of nerve, thinking he can hurt my friend-"

                "Figment, wait!"

                Before the dragon could get any further, a pair of hands grabbed him. "Lemme at 'em, DF! Lemme... at..." Figment trailed off as he turned his head and came face to face with the Doubt, its body a haze of TV static fuzz as it held onto him tightly.

                “Hey!!” Blair turned to Ellie at her voice, finding her held fast by an echo of an Epcot security guard. Next to her was Malcolm, posed as if he was holding someone, although Alan was notably missing.

                A cold hand rested on his shoulder, and Blair was tugged backwards, spun until he was eye to eye with the Zeitgeist, that black goop easing from under the Mesmonic Converter.

                "Let's start with a small one, shall we?"

                The screen below changed again, a shaky hand-held camera view of the scene playing before them below their feet. Ellie at first recognized the video as the one broadcast from the day this all happened, but the view was slightly different, slightly further away.

                "You're a memory!" Blair exclaimed, aloud. "How are you-"

                “Let’s present the facts, shall we, Mr. Mercurial?” The Zeitgeist didn't seem to hear him. The memory clicked a button on their remote and looked to the screen that wasn't there.

                “These things are massive! There’s no way that could be a turkey leg..." The memory went on and on as Blair tried to break from the grip on the back of his shirt, but it was too solid, too real to escape.

                “I don’t get it,” Blair looked to Ellie, who shook her head as if to say 'it wasn't me' as her voice continued.   “Emu legs? Their evil plan was telling everyone about… emu legs?”

                “It’s not about the emu legs!”

                And then, suddenly, he was there. In the memory-Malcom’s grip was Alan, head hanging as he said his lines.

               

“It’s not about any of this stuff in itself, Ellie, don’t you get it? It’s- something out of nothing- or _truth_ out of a bunch of bullshit...”

                Blair had known he missed Alan, but he hadn’t really fathomed how _much_ he’d missed him until he saw him for the first time in months. Secondary to this jolt of sad surprise was the sheer weirdness of seeing this memory from another angle, close enough to hear what Alan had said before he’d pushed his way up the steps and into the spotlight. Alan had known, he’d figured out way before anyone else that the Zeitgeist had been leading up to attacking the truth of Blair’s very existence, and he’d tried to avert disaster. He’d tried-

                “Libel,” muttered Alan. He sounded disconnected from the scene himself, like someone compelled to read a part. “Slander is spoken...”

                It was happening all over again. How many times had it happened already? How many times had this painful memory played itself out here, in the eye of the storm? Blair watched the echo of the Zeitgeist speak, reducing Alan to tongue-tied silence, with an increasing heat building in his chest. Figment, squirming even more now in response to Blair’s growing anger, felt the Doubt’s cold grip on his snout slipping a little.

                “I’m sure everyone’s _dying_ to hear your credentials-”

                _“Enough!”_

The giant screen under their feet jittered, the jerky footage breaking up and sputtering as it tried to stabilize. Blair, eyes blazing, pulled away from the hand on his shoulder and turned, placing himself between the memory of the Zeitgeist and Alan at his back.

                “You had your fun,” he said to the memory, who stuttered between the twisted version of Channing he’d been in reality and the blurry echo of Dean. In her hands, Ellie felt her bag grow warm as the Converter started to pick up on the growing dream energy around them. Thinking instinctively, she brought the bag up into the guard’s face and sent him stumbling back, then advanced on the shade of the Doubt, which shrank from the bag and lost the last vestige of its grip on Figment, helping the little dragon to struggle free.

                “I know, the past can have a firm grip... but this memory’s more than outstayed its welcome.” Blair deliberately turned his back on the Zeitgeist’s outraged face, the shape of the memory breaking up even more as he ignored it.

                “Let’s flip the script. What do you say, my friend?”

                The memory-Alan looked up at them for the first time. He said nothing, just looked at Blair with a tired, blank face and then turned away, fading into nothing as he went. And with that one simple action the screens- and the sounds- and the phantoms around them snapped off, fading to white lines and then dots and then _nothing,_ like an old-fashioned TV once the plug was pulled.

  “What happened?” asked Ellie, quietly, drawing close to Blair as they stood alone. The Dreamfinder let out a tense breath and put his hand up to touch Figment’s head as his little spark landed safely back on his shoulder.

    “He was just a memory, Ellie- just like Dean, and the Captain out there on the beach. I think...”

                The darkness was near-absolute. There was just Ellie, and Figment, and the Dreamfinder, standing close together on the glossy floor in a pall of grey light cast by one remaining TV screen.

                It was small, an old box model, and playing nothing but black-and-white fuzz. It sat on the floor, and Alan sat in front of it, a huddled shape casting a long shadow in the staticky glow. Blair knew at a glance that they’d finally found the real heart of the storm.

                “Alan-” he started, but the figure didn’t move.

                "Alan, it's me, it's us-" Blair took a step closer, removing his hat and holding it close to his chest. He had to try and keep his voice steady, as his friend kept his back to him. Figment set himself on Ellie’s shoulder as she hugged the bag to her heart, the warm hum of the Mesmonic Converter still underneath.

                "We've come so far to find you-"

                “I-I’m trying to fix it,” said Alan, apparently addressing the TV. He sounded panicky and lost and exhausted, falling over his own words.

                “I know what’s happening, I just- I don’t know how to stabilize it. There’s something fundamentally- wrong- I mean, of _course_ there is, he- I did this. I can’t do anything right, I- look, please- just go, I’ll- I’ll figure something out.”

                Blair took another step closer. It hit him how Alan had been fighting this alone, in this dark room all by himself. The feeling nearly winded him. Had he really been like this for the past three months?

                "You don't have to do this alone," he offered. "We're here, if we put all our heads together we can figure this out."

                Alan turned, sharply. His eyes were reddened and puffy and as tired as the Captain’s had looked, out in the real world. “Dreamfinder… what are you even doing here? Is it really so bad that you can’t help him from the outside?”

                He reached for the TV. It had knobs next to the screen- Ellie vaguely remembered the TV at her grandma’s house when she was a kid having the same things- dials that changed the channels. He snapped through them, band after band of static and- noise. Voices.

                _“That’s what I thought. Just goes to show you-”_

_“-you could be one of mine, I can smell it-”_

_“What a hero.”_

_“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”_

_“I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I hope-”_

_“Sooner or later you have to ask yourself, who am I kidding?”_

                Alan abandoned the TV controls and dropped his head into his hands. “I-I can’t do this. I can’t- it’s _me,_ it’s the fact I’m even _here_ somehow. I thought if I just stayed in here it’d be okay, but he’s falling apart and I can’t even-”

                "The Captain won't let me in. I'm not sure if you heard the... argument we had." Blair moved forward, his hat gingerly placed to the side as he sat next to Alan. He took a moment to try and cross his legs, taking one or two attempts. It had been awhile since he'd sat like this. “I didn’t understand, but I think I do now. He’s been trying to protect you.”

    Silence.

                Ellie felt Figment’s weight leave her shoulder as he fluttered over to Blair, settling himself in his lap.

                "The Captain is a brilliant idea," Dreamfinder started, after a long period of silence. Alan kept his face in his hands as he continued.

                "I can't help but notice the... attention spans, of people these days seem to be shorter. Don't tell Dr. Channing this, I'm sure he'd implode, but I remember all you told me about these virus videos-"

                "Viral," Alan corrected, softly.

                "Viral videos, thank you, and you were right. Sometimes people take bad things at face value these days, and having the facts presented to them with a personality as bright as his- I can see why he's so popular."

                "This is supposed to make me feel better?"

                "What I suppose I'm saying is, an idea as tremendous, as lofty as the Captain, he needs a creator. A baseline, a guide. Figment was my idea, and to this day we work together to make new things." The dragon accepted a head scratch as he talked.

                “That’s great for you! Dreamfinder, I-” Alan broke off, wretchedly. “I’m sorry, sir, you and Figment are a great team, but he’s a- a magical dragon and you’re a time-travelling, genius, inventor, polymath- more or less anything, you’re that! You have a _statue_ for crying out loud. I’m a- I’m- me.”

                It was almost impressive, how much disdain one person could pack into one syllable. “The Captain is a hero. How could I work with him? I- I- I couldn’t even talk to him! You of all people know what happens when I try to talk, when it’s _important-”_

Alan stopped, fidgeting with his sleeves, which were all crumpled up around his elbows. He seemed to be perpetually under the impression that they were falling down, always trying to push them up again even when they were exactly where he’d left them. “The world needs Captain Disillusion. What do you think my idea was? When I- Dreamfinder, when I put that helmet on my head, all I thought was- _please do what I can’t.”_

                "Did I ever tell you about when Figment was created?"

                Alan looked at him.

                "Ah, yes, I suppose I never would have had a chance to- it was back in London, when I was nothing more than Blarion Mercurial, all that Dreamfinder stuff came much, much later. The Mesmonic Converter project was falling apart in my hands. The latest prototype had just nearly burned down the college."

                Ellie quietly joined them, settling down at Blair’s side, crossing her legs as well.

                "If this project didn't work, I was going to be fired. My family would have lost everything, Sarah wouldn't have been able to get her medicine, and I'd’ve had to go and work in some smoky factory somewhere." He seemed to deeply shudder at the thought.

                "But the second prototype, it pulled Figment right out of me-"

                "And the rest is history?" Ellie asked.

                "Lord no, I was _horrified._ Imagine your boss asks you to create a new energy source, and you make a _dragon_ instead!"

                Figment giggled in his lap.

                "We didn't hit it off right away, but Figment helped me regardless. Without him, I would have never gotten the Converter fully functional. I would have never traveled into Imagination, and I would have never become _me."_

                Alan was quiet.

                "It's like... two cogs in a gear. A creator needs their idea to inspire, and an idea needs their creator to fuel them. The Captain can only do what you can't because you gave him that. That was your hope for him, and he got it. But he doesn't have everything, because that other half is in _you."_

Alan didn’t say anything at first. When he did, it was with difficulty, pressing his knuckles into his knees, trying to get the words out through gritted teeth. His voice was trembling.

                “You sound- you sound _so much like him._ He always- he always knew what to say-”

                Ellie made a couple of preliminary, warning throat-clearing noises. She had known Alan for all of a few hours several months ago- very eventful hours, throughout which they’d both been a bit too busy for small talk. From what she could tell, he was an introvert. She tended to have indifferent success, with introverts. They were a bit like high-strung racehorses, in that they tended to see Ellie coming, with her loud voice and loud clothes and loud… well, most things, really, and take off for the hills in terror. With this in mind, she tried the same sort of approach in talking to Alan as one might adopt when talking to a high-strung racehorse, She made no sudden movements, instead gingerly raising her hand as if they were all sitting in a classroom, and she spoke quietly.

                “Hey... listen, I knew Dean too, and I’ve known Blair for like, three months now- and believe me, he’s about as close to Dean as a guy who’s literally older than Morse code can be. He really _is_ Dean... just, you know, Dean with a big hat and a really cool dragon.”

                “That’s me,” said Figment, helpfully.

                “I didn’t come in here for the Captain’s sake,” said Blair, gently. “I was worried about you. I missed you, Alan.”

                There was a silence. Alan took a long, shaky breath. With his hands still bunching and plucking at his sleeves, with more control over his voice than he’d had since they’d found him, he finally looked up and managed to meet Blair’s eyes.

                “I- I… I missed you too.”

                Blair opened his arms, and Alan looked at him for a long, long time.

                And then he moved in.

                Dreamfinder hugged him tight, Figment wiggling out to join in the hug.

                Blair bit his lip as a tear formed in his eye. His best friend didn't have to be alone. Sure, things had changed. He was no longer Dean, and the Captain was here to stay. But in the end they were still friends. No matter time or imagination or change, they were there for each other.

 

                When Dean had woken up all those years ago, staring at a stained ceiling with a headache the size of Texas, he'd been alone in a world completely indifferent to him. He didn't know who he was, he had an uninteresting job, and not a friend in the world. But now, as he felt Alan in his arms, and Ellie and Figment at his back, he felt he was going to be okay.

                A long moment, then everyone pulled back. Alan was wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm.

                "So... now what?" Ellie asked. "The Captain is still falling apart out there."

                "Right." Blair started to get up. "Alan? Are you ready to go?"

                “Wait-” Alan was already beginning to look panicky again. “How long has it been? How long have I...”

                “About three months,” volunteered Ellie. It was a relief to get up. The glassy floor had already very efficiently sucked most of the warmth out of her feet.

                Alan groaned and screwed his eyes shut. “Oh, wow... I am _so_ fired.”

                “Somehow, I doubt it,” said Blair, smiling. “You helped save the Institute- if Dr. Channing doesn’t personally guarantee your job, he’s not the man I took him for.”

                His friend nodded, although the look in his eyes suggested he wasn’t listening- or listening without hearing, which was another thing altogether. He reached out again, snapping around the TV’s antiquated dial, but there was nothing this time but gentle noise.

                Blair watched him, feeling Figment prop his snout thoughtfully on his shoulder. People couldn’t be snapped from signal to signal so quickly, nor was it safe or kind to try to force them to. It was enough for right now that Alan believed he had been missed, that Blair valued him just as much as he had when he’d been Dean… in short, that he had something to go back to. He suspected- knowing Alan, he was more or less certain- that the storm around them had more than one catalyst, but he wasn’t so naive as to expect to solve everything all at once.

                He stood, brushing down his coat, and held out his hand in an unspoken question. Alan hesitated, then lifted his own, and let Blair pull him to his feet.

                “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

                He gave Blair’s hand a small squeeze before he let go, letting the Dreamfinder go to Ellie, hands out as she offered the bag. Blair thanked her, opening the purple flap and reaching in, his arm disappearing into the bag up to his shoulder.

                "Now for the Mesmonic Converter... " He rummaged around, brow furrowing as his fingers touched against a sphere about the size of a baseball. He reeled his hand in, and out came a bubble, glowing cold in his palm.

                "Now how did this get in here?" he asked, as Figment crawled along his outstretched arm, eyeing the memory bubble.

                "It feels... different," the spark said, sniffing at it before Blair gently nudged him back to his shoulder. The Dreamfinder tossed the ball up and made the same motion the memory-keeping Captain had made earlier. The karate-chops into the air were unsure, but nevertheless the bubble sputtered open, needing a moment to stabilize. Eventually, it turned to a somewhat-solid screen, showing Captain Disillusion alone, the light of a computer screen showing the bags under his eyes.

                "C'mon, Captain, think, THINK. The second video needs to be as strong as the first!" he muttered to himself, pausing in his typing for just a moment. "Maybe I can ask-" His entire being stuttered, blinking like a bad glitch, and he held a hand to his head. "Nngh, okay, maybe I can't ask. Ffff... _fudge._ Guess it's gonna be another all-nighter."

                The screen rippled, changing to a different scene. The Captain was teetering on a footstool, trying to hang a piece of equipment with little success.

                "I'm a superhuman being, I should be able to hang a darn Fresnel light-"

                The doorbell rang. The Captain waved his hand, and the image of Ellie, Capri, Figment and Blair waiting just at his doorstep came up in midair.

                "Shoot," the Captain muttered, quickly stuffing the equipment away as the screen faded into another scene.

                "I don't get it." Ellie was the first to speak. "The Captain always seemed like he had it all together."

                "Remember what I said earlier about the Captain having everything Alan didn't?"

                Alan gave him a quick, bewildered look, then glanced back to the strange little floating screen. By Blair’s side, Figment paused in the act of rooting through Ellie’s bag, halting with the Converter helmet held in both his small paws. Although he was an uncomplicated little being, unashamedly out of his depth in the difficult scientific concepts Blair could explain with diagrams and formulas, when it came to feeling and empathy he was sharp, astute, maybe even wise. He remembered the look the Captain had given him and Blair, on his ship- a similar quick, baffled glance, but shot through with dislike and… something he hadn’t been able to place.

                He got it now. It was there on the screen, with the Captain wrestling with yet another difficult mission by himself, and it was there in that odd little glance, and in the abandoned TV playing nothing but static. Figment and Dreamfinder were two cogs turning together, one supporting the other. He knew Blair thought the world of him. He loved his creator and he knew Blair _knew_ it. Their relationship was nothing like this weird broken symbiosis that both Alan and the Captain had been working so hard to try to preserve, pulling at each other like two blind combatants in the world’s most pointless and painful tug-of-war.

                No wonder the Captain had been so prickly. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to even _see_ either of them. Figment couldn’t imagine what it must feel like, to have the person who thought you up refuse to even speak to you, as if they were unimpressed or just plain indifferent to everything you did. He shuddered, and poked his snout into the crook of Blair’s elbow.

                Dreamfinder looked down, taking the helmet from Figment’s hands with a small “Thank you,” as he did. Alan took in a deep breath through his nose, watching as the Captain on the screen sat in the corner of the red room, head in his hands as the station stuttered around him.

                "I'm ready to go back now," he said, with more confidence than he'd felt in months.

                "There's the spirit," Blair smiled as he turned the dial on the side of the Mesmonic Helmet and it quickly woke in his hands. His top hat evaporated into dream matter as he set the helmet firmly on his head.

                "Right. Now, I think I've got it so re-entry won't be nearly as bumpy. Come along-" He opened his arms and Ellie quickly clung to his side.

                Alan paused, glancing back at the fuzzy TV. The static had not completely settled, but it looked better than if had before. Nevertheless, he moved to Blair, and trying not to think too much about it, hugged him.

                "Thanks, dude."

                Blair smiled as the helmet started to hum.

                "Anytime, Alan.”

 

 

* * *

 

                "Yes, yes, I'm thankful the plants all have understudies too."

                Dr. Channing paced the floor of Blair’s lab yet again to the opposite corner, then tried once more to give the Captain’s shoulder a small shake. He remained just as asleep as he'd been for at least an hour now. The Chairman’s face set in a deep frown, as the voice on the other end of the call continued.

                "Yes- I understand giant craters were not expected in the original contract-"

                He felt it moments before it happened. There was a charge in the air, the type that gave you goosebumps and made a tingle run up the length of your spine. There was a _crack,_ a sharp _pop,_ and then in a whipcrack of energy Dreamfinder, Figment and Ellie appeared out of thin air. Channing yelped and dropped his phone, too busy trying to catch it to notice as Alan took a deep gasp in the chair, followed by a round of coughing as he settled back into his body.

                "Whoo!!" Ellie laughed aloud as Figment clapped with a giggle. "What a rush!"

                "Dreamfinder?" Channing squeaked.

                "Chairman! Hello! Terribly sorry about leaving in such a hurry earlier-"

                All eyes turned to Alan as he stood on unsteady legs. He looked down at his striped shirt, then to Blair.

                "Where's Captain Disillusion?"

                The Dreamfinder paused to lift the Converter from his head, placing it in Alan’s hands.

                "It's up to you to bring him back, my friend."

                Alan weighed the helmet between his palms, thoughtfully. There was no hesitation this time, no reluctance, just a consideration and a determined straightening of his back as he hefted it up onto his head. The intricate lenses hid his eyes as he did so, but he shifted into a surer position on his feet, and a small smile broke cover and lifted his face.

                “Okay,” he said, again. “Okay. I can do this.”

                There was a slow rising shudder, a deep shake that sent tools and pens dancing across Blair’s work-surfaces and provoked an outraged whimper from Channing, who had apparently hoped the worst was over. The Converter thrummed and crackled with a golden energy that arced and grounded everywhere- a fork of it struck Figment harmlessly right on his purple snout, another lifted Ellie’s hair into a bonkers halo around her head- and Alan steadied the helmet with both hands as the light and the vibration peaked and-

                - _KaaAAATHOOOOOOM-_

Unwilling to miss a moment, Blair shielded his eyes only at the last second, but the explosion of dream energy blinded him anyway. Red-gold sparks sputtered across every conductive surface as the surge died away, and as everyone tried to blink the after-images from their dazzled eyes Captain Disillusion touched down on the mildly singed tiles, blinking too and feeling his bright jacket as if he was surprised to find himself all in one piece.

                He looked at Alan, and Alan fought the Converter hurriedly from his head and looked back. It was the first time they’d actually been face to face- in the real world or otherwise- and as the silence drew out, even the Captain seemed to be at a loss for words.

                “You… found me,” he said, at last. He sounded quite different from usual; wondering, unsure, even grateful. “I didn’t think you...”

                A moment, and he cleared his throat and pulled together something of his usual manner, straightening his jacket with a sharp little jerk. “I mean, what... what _took_ you so long??”

                Alan swallowed. “Captain… you did everything I hoped you’d do when I- when I made you. I didn’t… I didn’t think you needed me.”

                For a space, the Captain looked downright bewildered. He looked at Alan aghast, as if his creator had just said fish were birds, or maybe that turkey legs were emu. Then his whole expression changed, filling with relief, pity, understanding. _Is that it?_ _Is that all? This whole nightmare, for something that dumb, that wrong, that… easy to debunk?_

                “Don’t be silly,” he said, simply. “There’s no _me_ without _you.”_

 

 

                "Wowy- _wow!!"_ Figment exclaimed, breaking the moment as he immediately swooped towards the Captain. "Welcome back, CD!"

                "Hello, Figment, I-" He stopped mid-sentence, looking sharply around. His unspoken question was answered with a small _mrow_ from the other side of the room.

                "Leica!"

                Dr. Channing shuffled to the side as the Captain barreled through, opening the carrier as the cat purred. "Oh, thank- _Holly-_ you're okay."

                “Wait, why wouldn’t she be okay? What happened to her?” Alan was right behind him. Leica’s purr redoubled as she clambered out into his arms, and the two of them started to argue- or, more accurately, the Captain started to talk loudly and make wild arm movements, and Alan started to listen and try to wedge in a word whenever there was a gap- about the advisability of keeping a real cat aboard a quasi-imaginary spaceship.

                As the debate wound on in the background, Dr. Channing looked to all of them, then opened his mouth.

                "I'll explain over tea. As always," Blair assured.

                Channing closed his mouth and let out a long sigh, before giving a small smile.

                "So, all is well?"

                "All is well."

                "Right." Channing clapped his hands with a relief that only very _slightly_ bordered on the maniacal. "See you at tea, then."

                He gave Ellie, then Alan, a nod, before making a hasty retreat just as his phone started to ring again.

                "Don't worry, I'll ask him about your job, too," Blair smiled, glancing to Alan, whose shoulders drooped as he smiled back, still scritching the purring Leica under the chin.

                Ellie folded her arms with a content sigh, surveying the massive mess around them.

                "I love this job."

 

* * *

 

 

                The microwave truly was a marvelous invention, Blair thought to himself, peeking through the window at the brown bag within as it jumped and twitched. Sometimes he missed the London of old, how simple things had been and the promise of tomorrow, but he had to say, that road led to the invention of the microwave and he couldn't be happier. His mother would have loved one.

                He poured the popcorn into the massive bowl before moving into the living room, sitting down next to Alan on the couch that Dean had employed Alan’s help to bring up years ago.

                "No Figment?" Alan asked, as he aimed the remote at the TV.

                "Nope. He's staying behind to help Dr. Channing with something, despite Channings insistence. No Ellie?"

                "Shes up with the Captain," Alan said, taking a handful of popcorn. "When the ship reformed, he lost all his clothes and costumes, so she's helping him get new ones." He selected a feature, and the screen changed.

                _"In the not too distant future, next Sunday AD..."_

                "So it's just us tonight, then?" Alan grinned. "Just like old times?"

                Blair smiled.

                "Just like old times."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!  
> You can find the authors at   
> andersam5.tumblr and wafflebloggies.tumblr  
> If you would like to see more from this series, please let us know or drop a comment. we had a blast writing this and we hope you enjoyed this adventure!


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